1. Essential keyboard shortcuts/features
- Command/control + N = new note
- Command/control + O = open/search file name
- Command/control + P = “command palette”
- This is really useful! It opens the command palette which you then type commands into.
- It has auto-complete, so you don’t have to type the whole command, just use arrows and enter to complete
- E.g.,
light or dark to change modes.toggle left sidebar, toggle right sidebarchange themedelete current fileopen settingssplit right - opens the same note in another view on the right-hand side
- Etc! Basically, if you want to do the software engineer’s ideal thing of using the mouse as little as possible, the command palette is your friend
- Connect one page to another with the
[[double square brackets]] notation
- When the cursor is inside a
[[backlinked page]]
- Command + O opens the page in a new tab
- Option + O opens the page in the current tab
2. File browser
- If you’re just using Obsidian, I recommend not even caring about this.
- You can put your files in folders, but it’s not worth the hassle IMO
- (If you’re using Quartz, you just have to make sure that files live in the “content” folder)
3. Third party plugins
- To make Quartz work, you’ll want the “git” plugin - other than that, none are essential
- I’ll write a bit more about them here, hiding in a subpage because it’s optional!
4. Setting up some hotkeys
- This is optional, but the final step for me personally to have things be easy to navigate via the keyboard
- Obsidian hotkeys